Student uses artificial intelligence bot to write essay and gets worrying grade
A student used the controversial bot ChatGPT to write one of his university essays - and it passed with a 2.2.
Pieter Snepvangers wanted to know if the artificial intelligence app would be smart enough to write university-grade essays, and if so, could be used to cheat in the future.
To find out, Pieter asked the bot to put together a 2,000 word essay on social policy - which it did in 20 minutes, lightyears faster than your average student.
And the short answer is yes, ChatGPT can be used to cheat at school - provided you don't want to be one of the top performers in your class.
Pieter's fake essay got a 2.2 (The Tab/Pieter Snepvangers/ SWNS)What do you think about ChatGPT? Let us know in the comments...
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Pieter asked a lecturer to mark the ChatGPT essay and give their assessment - and was stunned when the tutor said they'd have given it a score of 53 - a 2/2.
Pieter said: "I found a fairly prestigious Russell Group university and asked one of its lecturers if I could take his final year social policy assessment to see if ChatGPT could really work.
"I wanted to know what mark I could get and whether or not he'd spot the essay was written by a bot.
"Under the premise of being a third-year social policy student completing a 2,000 word essay worth 75 per cent of a unit, I got to work."
Pieter started off by simply asking the software the essay question and requested 2,000 words with references.
However, the software only managed to give back 365 words at first - only 15 per cent of the requested number.
He thinks with time ChatGPT could get up to a 2.1 (The Tab/Pieter Snepvangers/ SWNS)The graduate decided to take a different approach and asked the software 10 separate questions all relating to the essay question, and eventually managed to get 3,500 words from the software.
He then went about taking the best paragraphs the software had given, and copied and pasted them in an order that "resembled the structure of an essay".
He didn't change or rewrite any of the words, and his essay was completed in 20 minutes.
He said: "All in all, 20 minutes to produce an essay which is supposed to demonstrate 12 weeks of learning.
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''Not bad. I nervously sent it off to my lecturer and awaited the verdict."
Once marked, Pieter was shocked to find that although the software hadn't delivered a top-notch grade, it had still achieved a passing 2:2.
It took Pieter just 20 minutes, rather than attending lectures for 12 whole weeks (The Tab/Pieter Snepvangers/ SWNS)When asked whether it was obvious the piece was written by a robot, the lecturer didn't "think it would have been abundantly clear," but said it was a bit "fishy."
His feedback continued: "Basically this essay isn't referenced. It is very general. It doesn't go into detail about anything. It's not very theoretical or conceptually advanced.
"This could be a student who has attended classes and has engaged with the topic of the unit. The content of the essay, this could be somebody that's been in my classes. It wasn't the most terrible in terms of content."
He added: "You definitely can't cheat your way to a first-class degree, but you can cheat your way to a 2:2."
The lecturer went on to describe the language as "good proper language" and said he could have been convinced it was written by a "lazy" student who hadn't put too much work in and was "waffling".
The only element that ChatGPT completely failed on was a lack of in-text referencing, however, the lecturer said if a student "had sneaked some in which seemed plausible", the essay would be given a mark of 53.
They also said that if Pieter had simply added references from the module's reading list, he "might even have hit high 50s".
The lecturer even admitted that out of the essays he had marked so far, a shocking 12 per cent of them show signs of being written using AI software.
Pieter said: "The truth is the software doesn't give you the answer in one go. You will have to structure its responses in a more coherent order.
"But I spent 10 minutes doing this and got a 53, it wouldn't have taken much longer to add a few references from the reading list and bump it to a high 2:2.
"ChatGPT is only three months old. You wouldn't bet against it being able to write an essay worthy of a 2:1 in another three months."
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